secretopossumcabal

GET AN ACCOUNTABILITY PARTNER -- visit communities that struggle with your particular vice -- don't try to conquer it alone, just as we need God's help, we can also reinforce each other.   

I find, in moments of temptation, thinking about "what would this person think of me if they saw me entertaining such thoughts?" helps tremendously, whereas, if you're isolated, you would not feel that you're letting someone down. Don't isolate yourself, pray constantly, seek others to help reinforce you.  

But we're ALL dealing with these things in one form or another, even the best among us, so don't let it keep you down. Don't give in, and even if you do, it's not the end of the world -- pick yourself back up and try again.  

Local Opossum continues to renew spiritual fervor amongst crowds of Christians.

Local Opossum speaks wisdom to a crowd of fair churchgoers. 

Read the book of Job -- over and over again. 

It's a struggle and a battle for all of us, but as you accumulate winters you will get stronger.  My opinion is don't isolate yourself, find other like minded people and keep productive. Don't EVER go near guns. I have struggled with major depression my entire life, if I had easy access to a gun at any point in my life I would not be here and fortunately, being committed once, i'm pretty much barred from owning a gun.

Last year -- around August, my dog died. I knew him for half my life and he was my best friend and my world. I tried to hang myself. I couldn't do it, thankfully God has never given me those kinds of guts, but a gun is a different matter as it is very easy and instant. I think it is best to NEVER go near them if a person suffered from any suicidal ideation at any point of their life.    

Use your pain to draw closer to the lord "I do this for you, my king", as the years go on, you will get stronger and you will bear fruit. We're not living for this life, but for the next one. This is our chance to show our loaylty and love to our creator, what greater testament is our love for him than by being beside him in pain?

But I know what it feels like when you're in the moment, you just have to hold on and talk to others. I hope that you don't have the guts, IMO, if they bar people who were committed from owning guns where you live. You need to force yourself into a mental hospital ASAP.   

As is written in Ecclesiastes 5:

Quote

 

The Folly of Riches

      He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves abundance with its income. This too is vanity. When good things increase, those who consume them increase. So what is the advantage to their owners except to look on? The sleep of the working man is pleasant, whether he eats little or much; but the full stomach of the rich man does not allow him to sleep.

      There is a grievous evil which I have seen under the sun: riches being hoarded by their owner to his hurt. When those riches were lost through a bad investment and he had fathered a son, then there was nothing to support him. As he had come naked from his mother’s womb, so will he return as he came. He will take nothing from the fruit of his labor that he can carry in his hand. This also is a grievous evil—exactly as a man is born, thus will he die. So what is the advantage to him who toils for the wind? Throughout his life he also eats in darkness with great vexation, sickness and anger.

      Here is what I have seen to be good and fitting: to eat, to drink and enjoy oneself in all one’s labor in which he toils under the sun during the few years of his life which God has given him; for this is his reward. Furthermore, as for every man to whom God has given riches and wealth, He has also empowered him to eat from them and to receive his reward and rejoice in his labor; this is the gift of God. For he will not often consider the years of his life, because God keeps him occupied with the gladness of his heart.

 

Comfort in physical things is a very brief and fleeting joy, one that will only make you feel empty in the end. Also keep in mind that it's too much comfort that tends to destroy people... Good times create weak men, weak men create hard times, hard times create strong men, strong men create good times.

Take each day as an opporunity to strengthen your skills and harden your resolve, this is concerning physical things, but these physical things will one day go the way of the world, as Ecclesiastes warns, our focus needs to be on God and not on the nice things of the world.  

Be it in comfort, or be it in pain, you will have some form of discomfort, be it spiritual or physical. Which is why we need to deny ourselves and take up our crosses as he instructed us...this is your cross, and we all have it in some form or another. 

5 hours ago, LightShinesInTheDarkness said:

I don't watch t.v., so I don't know anything about that show, but as a word of advice about t.v., watching it is a bad idea in general. It's full of filth and worthlessness, and encourages sensual thinking rather than spiritual thinking. It's not created for spiritual people, but for carnal people, and it caters to the desires and interests of the same.

When a Christian watches t.v., he or she is being affected not only by the programming he or she is watching---by being inundated with images and ideas and values that are not Godly---but also by the commercials that come on during the program. Things that would have been considered perverted and pornographic in the past are now included in commercials.

(Don't think it isn't affecting you, because it is: It's distracting and pulling you away from the New Testament's standard and God's ways and dulling you down to accept the world's standard and it's ways---like the pull of the tide against the body of a person who is trying to walk parallel to the shore, or like wind or water gradually eroding a mountain. The demons would like you to think that it's harmless entertainment, but it's detrimental to your spiritual health---or at the very least, unhelpful.)

When a Christian watches t.v., he or she is immersing him or herself in Godlessness: Secular humanist values and atheism, un-Godly music, pornographic images, overt or suggested sexual immorality, feminism, homosexuality, profanity, immodesty, blasphemy, covetousness, drunkenness, violence. And Jesus is watching whatever the Christian is watching, through his or her eyes.

We should honor God with our bodies and our spirits, and not grieve the Holy Spirit; and this includes what we watch on t.v. or look at on the internet.

The people who run the t.v. and movie industries, and Google, are under the power of the evil one, and they are ignorantly carrying out the desires of the demons that are influencing them. But we, as Christians, should not be so ignorant. 

Think of the internet, movies and television as portals to the things of hell, and be mindful of your conscience towards God when you navigate the minefield of the internet. If your conscience doesn't have peace that whatever you're watching is acceptable to God, don't watch it.

 

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:2)

As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, "You shall be holy, for I am holy." (1 Peter 1:14-16)

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. (1 Corinthians 6:19,20)

And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. (Ephesians 4:30)

Finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. (Philippians 4:8)

 

 

 

I find the older I get the more I tend to realize how much of what you say is true. When I was around 25, I went through a depressed phase when I would flip through movie posters online and I'd get disappointed "it's all the same thing -- sex and violence -- violence and sex, has anybody created anything new?" The violence ceased to be spectacle to me, and I wanted to find something more wholesome, but I never found it, from then on I would gradually stop watching programming.  

Nowadays I just occasionally watch a sporting event over the internet, but that's about all the media I consume aside from some childhood movies I love to rewatch every now and then. 

Satan certainly has the networks under his grasp, what better vector to peddle the lie through? He'd be stupid to ignore it, but thankfully cord-cutters are now making legacy media panic, I think they are going to tighten their grip on the internet in the next few years, as he wont be able to count on the masses without controlling the news, and if people are getting their news through independent internet blogs and so on, then that is a problem and he's going to find a reason for censorship. We can already see shades of that through the Russia scaremongering and "fake news" sensation.

But television by en large is mostly just poison for your brain -- the cartoons, the pundits, the networks, it's all under his control to turn the natural order upside down. 

Guns are the horns and fangs of a father, to dehorn and defang the father is the very essence of emasculating civilization, which in turn is about ridding the hierarchy which God has built and to turn men into effeminate disheveled ghosts that no longer care to defend society. A bull has horns for a reason. 

Satan relishes at the thought of Christians being unable to defend their homes, of men being without horns or fangs, of governments unchecked by the people they should serve. 

I don't like to admit it, but I used to be there, it took me 1.5 years of constant prayer and struggle to finally vanquish that demon.

Nowadays I rarely have any "thoughts" on the matter, It was a constant struggle of prayer and self-denial, your husband will have to walk through the fire but he will have to WANT it first, as his spirit will be dragging his brain kicking and screaming to where it should be, he has to want it with all of his heart and pray for God to take it away from him... 

There's a video you should show him on youtube, search for "YOUR BRAIN ON PORN", that video should put some fear into him as he is abusing his brain.  

A lot of young guys struggle with this nowadays and don't know that they're doing evil in the eyes of God. Porn is a public mental health crisis and absolutely nothing good can come from its consumption. I wish I had known the dangers when I was a naive young adult who thought it was harmless, but it turned my brain into jello and made me much more depressed in the long run. There's a terrible trade off that young people don't realize.    

There are also communities out there dedicate to quitting this very thing, they helped me quit as well:

Reddit.com/r/nofap  -- Whom have a LOT of resources on how to quit but these people ultimately center their lives on intimacy and not God.
and
Reddit.com/r/nofapChristians  -- This community is the one that really helped me quit but it's a lot smaller however, it's centered on God and the fellowship that Christians offer IMO is much more wholesome.

Find accountability partners for him, encourage him to join a community, engage in constant prayer, and eventually all these things working in unison will harden the brain like a muscle, and he will build resistance. Eventually he'll break free, It happened to me, it can happen to him.    

38 minutes ago, simplejeff said:

YHVH chose Israel out from all the other pagan heathen gentile nations, and He will restore Israel soon.

As He Promised Abraham,  everyone, anyone, who harms or even seeks to harm Israel, YHVH curses.

Everyone, anyone, who helps and blesses Israel,  YHVH blesses.

By YHVH'S CHOICE,  YHVH BROUGHT SALVATION THROUGH ISRAEL to the world. 

 

My point is that if there was no Israel then God has the power to create another nation to serve him, what he created once, he can do again. Therefor it makes no sense to put Israel above Christ. Do not limit the Lord who has done all things and who can do away with all things just as quickly as they came. 

Israel was created and chosen to serve God, not the other way around. 

Israel is a canvas, and an artist can pick up a canvas and he can put it down again. Creation is not greater than creator, and Christ is God, the master of that canvas, the canvas has no value without the artist, just as Israel, when they abandoned God, they had no value to God, and so God surrendered them to foreign rulers until they came back to him.

God most certainly has the power to pick up another canvas, this is not me saying that Israel is not important, but that God rules over Israel and that the portrait of Christ can well come through any canvas if God so willed it.

Creation will never be greater than creator. 

9 minutes ago, lokp said:

you are really missing the spirit behind neighbours post....he has been gracious to me and expressing his and His love for Israel. SO what if you differ, extend a bit of grace yourself.

Well that's okay, and the biblical Israel is very important, but just don't limit God or put Israel above God.

"Then it will be known to the ends of the earth
that God rules over Jacob."

-- Psalm 59

1 hour ago, Neighbor said:

There is no basis  for Jesus who is God without Israel.

I take a bit of umberage with this, Israel is a creation of God, to say that there can be no Christ without Israel is to say that there can be no God without Israel. 

You are putting Creation above Creator, and limiting God. Through him which all things are possible. 

I don't think that's a very nice thing to do to him. 

• People who clumsily knock over their garbage bins on the sidewalk without knowing. YUM! 
• Being Immune to snake venom, rattlesnakes are delicious
• Being Immune to rabies
• Having survived the highway thus far...this is not a metaphor 
• Having arranged a lot of discipline in my life
• More consistently reading the bible
• Strengthening of my mind and body
• I no longer mistake bible pages for food

1 hour ago, john1 said:

1 John chapter 4 verse 18

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

I'd say the King James Version is more accurate as to not confuse people: 

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.

1 John 4:18 is clearly speaking of a different kind of fear, not the parent-child bond that God has with us (where torment has no place). God shouldn't inflict us with a predatory kind of fear, which 1 John 4:18 for it has torment. 

Children who really love their parents would not feel that kind of tormenting fear inside of their parents love, but they do fear separation, disappointment that comes from not being an obedient child. The child would not be tormented by their parents love if they truly loved each other, as the bond drives out the tormenting fear that 1 John 4:18 describes.

But it not-so-very clearly means something else as then it would be contradiction, and Jesus Christ said that he did NOT come to do away with the old law but to fulfill it. Just one of those intricacies that shows the limits of human languages, as one would need two different words describing two different kinds of fear to not get confused here.

Just as children should fear and respect their parents, humans should fear and respect God because he is THE parent. When our parents tell us to do something, we do that thing with respect of the consequences should we not do it. When we're kids our parents have a greater perspective of what's good for us even though we want to spend all our days eating ice cream and watching cartoons, though we don't understand it in the moment. That is our relationship with God -- he knows what's good for us -- he see's what we don't understand in the moment. 

Now we look as through a glass dimly, then we shall see face to face.

Because of our limited brains, we can't really fully understand his reasoning so he uses something more primal than limited human reason to get the point across (or rather the mission), just as children would not understand the parent's reason until much later when they're grown, that will be us in heaven, so while the child is young, fear and respect needs to walk beside love, and what is love without respect or fear?  It becomes either lust or passion, without the temperance needed to truly thrive in the long haul.    

But in short...God needs to use fear because of our limited human perspective. It also helps him save the most people as we don't need to be very smart to be motivated by the fear of separation from him. 

Search on Youtube "Why we are afraid, a 1,400 year old secret" by Dr Bill Warner. He shows you the carnage of blood, sorrow, and slavery that Islam has left as it carved its way through ancient Christian civilization and made their way towards Europe. 

For this reason, people should really thank the Orthodox church and Constantinople. Constantinople stood between Europe and the Saracen hordes for over 1,000 years, keeping Europe safe. Constantinople as a Christian city had perhaps the finest walls this world has ever seen, and it took the invention of the cannon to finally bring that beautiful city down.

Which is why the crusades were actually a good thing (apart from the fourth crusade), the schools tell us that it was barbarism for Christians to defend Christians in the holy land, that's because the schools are filled with satanic progressives who hate it Christians defend themselves, and when they put their minds to it, they are quite good at it. Satan knows that when confronted with someone that can identity and fight him, he knows full well just how weak he actually is, and the Saracen hordes likewise. Read about the Siege of Malta, and how they just relentlessly throw numbers at a problem, then witness the beauty of a handful of decent Christian knights surviving near impossible odds. 

What I find particular about Islam is its hatred for women's beauty, evil hates the very idea of beauty and innocence, and women have neoteny, that is the preservation of childlike traits, so women end up reminding them of innocence, and so they cover them up with trash bags as to avoid their own anger and impulse. 

Islam is a creation of Satan. There are two foes that are doing Satan's bidding right now, one fights you with his body, the other fights you with his mind, it is hard to detect the later, though the former is obvious, it's the later that is the true threat as It is hard to detect them, but it's even harder to call them out.    

On 2/1/2018 at 2:20 PM, missmuffet said:

The church’s unique, God-given purpose does not lie in political activism. Nowhere in Scripture do we have the directive to spend our energy, our time, or our money in governmental affairs. Our mission lies not in changing the nation through political reform, but in changing hearts through the Word of God. When believers think the growth and influence of Christ can somehow be allied with government policy, they corrupt the mission of the church. Our Christian mandate is to spread the gospel of Christ and to preach against the sins of our time. Only as the hearts of individuals in a culture are changed by Christ will the culture begin to reflect that change.

This smacks me as defeatism, how do you change a heart without speaking a word, and in that case, why would the bible even have been written at all? And in the case of leading by example, how do you change a heart if that heart doesn't even know you exist in the first place? 

While our struggle is mostly spiritual, that doesn't mean that the physical world doesn't matter. Political activism is discourse, discourse is debate, frame your debate within the context God gave us, which is placed squarely in the existentialism of our lives --in the very notion of love itself -- and you'll come out on top. 

Never get angry when you debate someone, never react to their ad-hominems, learn how to identify strawmen. Love is so central to Christianity and existence that your detractors will often try to prop up strawmen in order to frame the debate away from the existential question of love. But when you stay on the very idea of love, God, and existence itself, that is when they'll struggle to rebuff you, because they know deep down that this world is all that they have, yet they know that they will lose it someday, bringing us to what Christ said "He who saves his life will lose it, he who losses his life for my sake, will save it". 

Heaven must inform earth through Christianity, as the clouds rule over the land. Getting away from political discourse is defeatism and I don't think it's a good path to follow. Should Moses have stopped saying "Let my people go" just because the Egyptians ruled over them? Should Christians stop saying "Abortion is murder" just because our governments rule over us?  

Anyways, having said that, I don't think it's everyone duty to throw their weight around in politics. Political discourse is very taxing and time consuming, sometimes it takes up my entire day, and it does aggravate and get to people who aren't used to dealing with it. Christians who are very active in politics are like spiritual foot soldiers, but even they need a class of peasants/farmers/priests to support them, so it's very much like a feudal society, not everyone is meant to be engage in spiritual combat like the foot soldier, some are just pure nurturers, which is just as important. 

Also, my signature quote is very relevant "Politics without God", William Booth was such a visionary. 

As Ecclesiastes says, to serve the lord with gladness.

The teacher in Ecclesiastes tried to find a meaning to life outside of God, he failed because everything that we do on this earth, when it's for our sake is utterly meaningless, as it all ends in death, none of it really matters. 

Essentially it's the story of Sisyphus who had to roll a boulder up a hill only to see it roll back down again, that is man's lot outside of God.

God is the gambit that changes all of that, because there is retention to ours works beyond life through his son, so the teacher in Ecclesiastes ultimately found that God was the only one that added any meaning to life.  

There was a cool little picture that I saw not too long ago that illustrated this point well. While Sisyphus was taking a break, there was a Christian cross holding the boulder up. I wish I had saved that picture as it was quite profound. 

Humans are happiest when they are in a hierarchy, with a functional family inside of the body of God. God is that essence of being a part of something "larger than yourself" which people often say is very integral to happiness, we are as limbs, as toes, as fingernails to his body, and he is our head. 

Men accrue more power with age, whereas women derive power through their youth and beauty, additionally men are not attracted to female empowerment. Men like women who are innocent like children, meaning the smaller a woman makes herself, the more her partner desires her. Whereas women are attracted to alpha males, males are not attracted to dominant females, so that's pretty much why men go lower and women go higher. 

I don't like significant age gaps myself as they smack of something that's more physical rather than spiritual, it makes me sad whenever I see it, but IMO, i think anything pass 10 speaks of a relationship that is more physical than spiritual, and those will raise eyebrows.   

Racism is not something that can go away, as it's an extension of tribalism; if a family harbors preference for their own, that will reflect in a race, because a race is an extension of a family, people are nicer to those that remind them of family, blacks are also guilty of this, as is every other race as it is perfectly natural. The sad truth of the matter is that to destroy racism is to destroy the blood-tie that binds a people together, meaning that it will never go away for as long as we're on earth.  

The truth of the matter is that humans are creating another tower of babel in globalism and that is riling racial tensions up, you know as they say, a good fence makes a good neighbor, that is being done away with to turn man against man. Borders are being destroyed in order to bring about the destruction of civilized humanity. 

There is a saying Diversity + Proximity = War, which is manifesting, racial tensions are not getting better they are getting worse, this is a product of the evil one, people are happier when they are with their own kind, when they're allowed to assert beauty standards based on their own kind. 

Additionally -- here is some tough love -- but you are lamenting that the world is not changing for you. You're not God, you're not going to be able to undo paradise lost out of this condemned world. If you're going to act like a victim you will be a victim, he who lives by the sword shall die by the sword. The serenity prayer should help you let go of trying to pull paradise out of this world:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change; 
courage to change the things I can; 
and wisdom to know the difference.

You need to let go of the things you cannot change, you will be happier. There is no saving this world beyond Christ, it is doomed, we're aiming for the next one. The best any one of us can do is put a band-aid on the gaping wound that this planet has, and that will certainly not amount to much. Only Christ can do anything to fix it, and he most certainly is not you or I.

My advice is to not to get sucked into the "social justice" farce, who continuously seek the opposite of the serenity prayer in an age of affluence and opulence, in no era in all of time has there been an age where it's better to be black than in the modern west, this is the trap of Egalitarianism. Satan tried to assert true equality with God, knowing that it will end in defeat, if you seek true equality with the other races, you will fail, for once you stamp out one hill, 100 more pop up. This is a sinister trap that Satan has laid out for the foolish ones who think it prudent to follow him on that angry spiral into hell. 

You have to let go of some things.

I know exactly what you're talking about, i've been in this cycle before, this 'stress -- sin -- stress -- sin' cycle.

Instead of doing that, try to take a relaxing bath, people often recommend "cold showers" to take those urges away, if not that, walk around the house/neighborhood, talk to friends, do not give in to the urge -- find other avenues to 'decompress', when the sinful nature becomes a frequent habit, that is when it will become extremely hard to break and it took me 1.5 years of constant struggle to shake it off.  

There are two communities that can help deal with your response to stress, frequent them and keep in mind their suggestions:

Both offer great insights in learning how to deal with stress and manage the urges to do what is wrong.  

Pagans built altars to their gods and sacrificed to their gods.

The ancient Israelites built altars to God and sacrificed to God.  

Who knew the ancient Israelites were doing such evil in the sight of the lord? /s 

All that really matters in the end is that our rituals and customs glorify God in an appropriate and dignified manner. The most important thing that sets us apart from the pagans isn't the fluff that surrounds tradition, but rather the whole purpose of the tradition. Our festivities honor God, theirs does not.

Puppy uses skillful dance moves to convince vets not to neuter him.

"You don't want these sick moves to die with me... do you?"

3 minutes ago, missmuffet said:

People with autism have serious challenges with the above. Sometimes they can not even speak. Sometimes there are challenges with motor skills.

Yup, aspergers usually has other comorbid mental conditions, personally i have a huge history with insomnia, chronic depression, and bipolar disorder. Relationships are out of the question for me (in addition to other reasons I needn't get into). 

Though from what I've seen, aspie girls do a lot better relationship-wise as their peculiar interests oftentimes leads them to become involved in very male-dominated fields, making them highly coveted. There's also the fact that appearing shy as a girl is not a negative, for a male that is a death blow of enormous proportions. 

Aspie males have it rough, especially if they don't have very involved parents, specifically a father to carefully guide them into manhood. A father needs to be very aware of how important developing an autistic boy's confidence is, it's just far too important in intersexual relationships.